Robert Herrick

“ As they crossed the entrance hall, they ran into Pemberton, who was alone. He bowed to Helen as though he meant to speak to her, and then catching sight of Jackson, who was behind her, he merely bent his head the fraction of an inch, and, stepping to one side, passed on. He could not, evidently, forgive a stain upon a man's honor, arrogating to himself, as so many of us do, the privileges of deity. The architect's face flushed at the slight, and he hurried his steps toward the vestibule. ”

“ In America, thank God, the poor man may yet rise to a position of leadership, if he be worthy. And what the world needs to-day more than all else is leaders, leaders of men. May we not prophesy that the Jackson Industrial Institute will be a large factor, yes, the largest factor of this great city, in educating leaders, and thus assisting to put an end to that wasteful and distressing antagonism between capital and labor? By the means of the education here provided, young men may raise themselves from the ranks of common labor to the position and responsibilities of capital! ”

“ Jackson had often spent his long vacations at the farm with his mother when he was at college. Yet that April afternoon, when he came upon it from the bend in the Verulam road, it seemed to him singularly unreal. His memories of the house and the meadow in front of it had grown and flowered, until in his imagination it had become a spot of tender, aristocratic grace, a harmony of swaying elm branches and turfy lawn, lichened stone walls and marvellous gray clapboards. ”

“ These good people were stung into unusual animation because a man had died leaving his family not poor, but within sight of poverty. For poverty is the deadliest spectre to haunt the merchant class at their lying down and at their uprising.
When the men came in, murmuring among themselves fragments of the same topic, Helen felt as though she might shriek out or laugh hysterically, and as soon as she could she clutched her husband, just as he was sitting down beside Mrs. Pemberton.
"Take me away, Francis. It's awful," she whispered. ”

“ Life is strong and good. There is, for all, forgiveness and peace. Here I bury the filth of my deeds, and renew my hope." Thus man rises again and again from the depths of his abasement; thus springs in him a new hope, a vital, imperishable element, the soul of his being; and he is prepared afresh for the struggle. Deep within him there lies forever the unconquerable conviction of his power to rise, to renew himself. ”

“ Jackson's lip trembled beneath his mustache, as he murmured to himself:—
"Yes, I supposed it would be. It's as tough as it well could be, for her!"
"I know he'll come through,—he must!" Venetia exclaimed helplessly, and added in a burst of admiration, "That trouble couldn't happen to Helen—it just couldn't! She's so splendid, Jack! It's a big thing to know there are such women about. She's holding him up there now, with a smile on her face!" ”

“ Across the room the girl's face had settled into sober thought, the tears drying on her cheeks where they had fallen. With that glorious promise of Life Everlasting still reverberating in her soul, she felt that the only real Life which poor human beings might know was that life of the "spiritual body," the life of the good, which is all one and alike! To her, Powers Jackson was simply a good man, the best of men. ”

“ A woman entered, dressed in fashionable widow's mourning. She moved deliberately, as if she realized exactly the full effect of her entrance at that moment among all these heated, tired people. The men crowded in the hall made way for her instinctively, so that she might enter the dining-room, to the right of the coffin, where the family and a few intimate friends of the dead man were seated. Here, a young man, the nephew of Powers Jackson, rose and surrendered his chair to the pretty widow, whispering:—
"Take this, Mrs. Phillips! I am afraid there is nothing inside." ”

“ It's your business, too, to be nice to dear Mr. Pemberton. I shall leave you when he comes up, so that you can beguile him with your sweet ways. It's money in thy husband's purse, mouse, and hence in thy children's mouths. Now if we women could scramble for the dollars,—why, we shouldn't want other kinds of mischief. I'd like to be a big broker, like Rainbow, and handle deals, and make the other fellows pay, pay, pay!"
She swung the small Francis over her head and tumbled him in the grass, to the delight of Pete, who hobbled about his mistress, yelping with joy. ”

“ If you want to do big work, you have to be your own master, and not work for some one else! And art, especially architecture, lives on the luxury of the rich, whom you seem to despise!"
"What does it matter whose name goes on the plans? It's the work that makes it that counts, and no one can have that but the one who does it."
"Now, you're talking poetry, Nell, not sense!" he exclaimed good-naturedly, getting up from the lounge and walking to and fro. "This world doesn't run on those lines, and you and I aren't going to make it over, either. You're talking like a romantic girl!" ”

“ At that moment Venetia came into the room, unnoticed by the two on the lounge. She stood for a little while watching them, and then, with a smile on her expressive lips, noiselessly withdrew.
"Well, wire for a passage to-morrow," Mrs. Phillips murmured....
There was nothing more, nothing that would have offended the most scrupulous; for the architect, at least, was essentially healthy-minded. In a lonely moment he might satisfy the male need for sympathy by philandering with a pretty woman, who soothed his bruised egotism. But he did not have that kind of weakness—the woman weakness. ”

“ At first, however, a man could think of but one thing in the presence of Mrs. Phillips: "You are a woman, and a very inviting one!"
Doubtless she meant that men should think that, and nothing more, at first. Those who had come through the fire, to whom she was cold and hard, like an inferior gem, might say later with the judge:—
"Louise flings her sex at you from the first smile. If you feel that sort of thing, the only thing to do is to run."
Jackson Hart had not yet reached this point of human experience. ”

“ For it is true that after sluggish years there has revived within Hart the creative impulse, that spirit of the artist, inherent to some extent in all men, which makes the work of their hands an engrossing joy. The plans of a group of buildings, which the firm have undertaken for a university in a far Western state, have been entrusted very largely to Hart. As they grow from month to month in the voluminous sheets of drawings, they are becoming the pride of the office. And Wright generously allots the praise for their beauty where it largely belongs. ”

“ Powers Jackson, as one of the directors of the enterprise, had entertained many of the artists and distinguished men who came to the city, and at his dinner-table she had heard men talk whose vital ideals were being worked into the beautiful buildings beside the lake. Their words she had hoarded in her schoolgirl's memory, and now in her sympathy for the young architect she began to see what could be done with an awakened feeling for art, for social life, to make our strong young cities memorable. ”

“ To want to help, to care about helping, that's the best thing in men and women,—caring to help others whether what they do succeeds in the end or fails. Nobody can know that."
The doctor's face lost its ironical grin; he looked at Helen very gravely.
"That feeling you talk about must be a kind of extra sense which I haven't got. It's like the color nerve or the sound nerve. I've always been color-blind. In the same way I haven't that other feeling you talk about. And I guess most folks in this world are like me. If they felt like you, why it wouldn't be the same old world we know." ”

“ If she's a pretty-looking girl when he marries her, sweet and fresh, them looks don't last long. It's like anything you use all the time. There's no chance to lay it by and let it freshen up. Now you and my wife were about of an age, I judge. But she looked to be the mother of you, before she died. You are as pretty as you ever was or more so, and men would court you to-day if you were single. It wasn't so with my woman, and I did the best I could for her, too. Don't you suppose a working-man hates to see his wife grow old, through hard work and no chance to freshen up? ”

“ One by one he recalled the fraudulent works in which he had had a part,—the school from which he had tried to steal some of the money his uncle had denied him, and finally this hotel, which had crumbled at the touch of fire. That was the strange, dramatic climax of the story, fated so to be from the first petty lust for money, from the first fraud.
Greed, greed! The spirit of greed had eaten him through and through, the lust for money, the desire for the fat things of the world, the ambition to ride high among his fellows. In the world where he had lived this passion had a dignified name ”

“ The architect realized that Graves was making an appeal to his sympathies, and although the wheedling tone, so unlike the man's usual blustering self-confidence, roused his contempt, he began to see more dispassionately the contractor's point of view. The man was fighting for his life, and there could be nothing reasonable to him in a determination to make a bad matter worse. For no amount of truth now could save those hapless victims of greed who had lost their lives in the wretched building. ”

“ They often entertained friends in this same restaurant after the theatre, and she had seen the waiter carry off two twenty-dollar bills and return with very little change. It seemed to her plain nature simply wicked to pay so much money—the blood of human beings—merely to eat. They paid, she knew, for the tarnished ceilings, the heavy carpets, the service—all the infinite tawdry luxe of modern life.
"And why not?" Jackson demanded impatiently when she protested. "Don't I make it? If I want to spend it on champagne and crab-meat, why shouldn't I? I hustle hard enough to get it." ”

“ It was a world of graft, the architect judged cynically. Old Powers Jackson, it was said in Chicago, would cheat the glass eye out of his best friend in a deal. He, too, would follow in the path of the strong, and take what was within his reach. He would climb hardily to the top, and then who cared? That gospel of strenuous effort, which our statesmen and orators are so fond of shouting forth, has its followers in the little Jackson Harts. Only, in putting forth their strong right arms, they often thrust them into their neighbors' pockets. ”

“ While Graves talked in his thick, guttural tones, Hart was weighing this risk. The whiskey that he had been drinking had not obscured his vision in the least, although it shed a rosier glow over the desired capital. It must be admitted that the architect gave little consideration to the trustees or to his uncle's bequest. It would have pleased him, if he had thought much about it, to make a good round hole in his uncle's millions, of which the old man had deprived him. And as for the trustees, they were shrewd men of the world, quite able to take care of themselves. ”

“ If she had had much experience of men and things,—if she had had the habit of mean interpretation,—she would have understood the architect's perplexity long before this. But added to her inexperience was her persistent need of soul to see those she loved large and generous.
"Well," Hart resumed, more guardedly, "I didn't mean any disrespect to the old man. It's only the oldest law of life that he lived up to. And I guess he meant to have me learn that law as fast as I can. You've got to fight for what you want in this world, and fight hard, and fight all the time. ”

“ A deep, new longing filled his heart, a desire to be once again as he had been before, to rise from his debasement and become clean, to slough off this parasitic self into which he had grown all these years of his strife in the city, to be born anew like the springtime earth—such longings as come to men when they are sickened with the surfeit of their passions. ”

“ The women had the blanched faces of country girls over whom the city has passed like the plates of a mighty roller. The men had the tan of the distant prairies, from which they had come with their stock. Their business over, the season's profit obtained, they had set themselves to deliberate debauch that should last for days,—as long as the "wad" held out and the brute lust in their bodies remained unquenched.
Presently the waiter returned with the heavy bottle and slopped some of the wine into a glass. The architect raised it and drank. ”